this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
185 points (99.5% liked)
World News
50886 readers
2898 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
- Blogsites are treated in the same manner as social media sites. Medium, Blogger, Substack, etc. are not valid news links regardless of who is posting them. Yes, legitimate news sites use Blogging platforms, they also use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube and we don't allow those links either.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
At least they're not wasting resources and fossil fuels during a time that is critical for the planets climate. /s
Oh, you mean that project for which they forcefully relocated thousands of people and killed at least one?
Sure would suck if the Saudis murdered and imprisoned people and then bulldozed their homes for one of the dumbest and most expensive architectural failures in human history.
The damage to the Saudis’ brand here could be quite bad.
Ah yes, the once great brand of the Saudis'. Damaged... What idiot wrote this?
someone who did not want to be thrown into a shredder?
They’ve been quite successful at laundering their image. Plenty of people talk about going to Dubai as if it’s no different to going to Paris. The recent comedy festival got limited pushback online but doesn’t seem to have actually had any negative effects on the comedians who performed there.
Dubai is not in Saudi Arabia.
You’re right, I’m an idiot
I do agree with your first sentence, though, your examples just weren't great 😁.
I think SAs wild architecture ideas are cool and fun but it's the blood money, slavery, and human rights violations that bother me.
They're also wildly terrible. The only reason any of them get built is because the government throws huge amounts of money at it and doesn't care about the feasibility or impact.
Those are very much vanity projects, as Saudi royalty are on a epeen contest versus other Gulf emirates.
Are they going to properly demolish it or just fly some planes into it?
It's 9-1111111111111111111111 all over again.
It doesn't matter.
That money was wasted lining the pockets of cronies, while everyone else still has to live in squalor.
It was actually a pretty great extraction of wealth by UK and international architectural and civil engineering firms.
it's almost funny how terrible the sauds are at ~~investing~~ gambling, or it would be if they didn't blow shit up everytime they get bagged.
nobody likes a sore loser
McKinsey & Company alone pocketed $800+Millions for their "engineering consulting" ... If they gave me a $1000, I'd have given better consulting and saved them billions
McKinsey is a high-level management consulting firm. They don't know thing one about engineering. They just bought in the expertise and massively marked up the price, and probably even then, couldn't tell a good hire from a bad one.
Part of the reason why Iran hates Saudi Arabia and its royalty for being predisposed to decadence just like the last shah they overthrew, in addition to the Sunni-Shia schism.
That, and the fact that the Saudis gave lip service to Palestinian rights, while cutting deals with Israel on the DL for decades (and now continuing to do so in the open). The Islamic Republic is full of shit in lots of ways, but they're definitely in opposition to Western interference in the region, and to states taht collaborate with the west in that interference.
Who didn't see this one coming?
The predictable result of a "kingdom" ruled by an overgrown baby, who got put into power because it benefits other countries who need the oil to keep flowing. All the consulting and contracting dollars made along the way are a huge plus for those other countries duping the baby king. They've been duped by consultants for decades on idiotic projects like crop circles which suck up huge amounts of water to produce food at a higher price than they could get it imported using the very limited water which will not be replenished. They were sold on the idea of food independence, but it's idiotic to tap into those reserves when you can import the food for cheaper. Keep the reserve in case food imports jump up in price! Now they've used up much of those reserves and won't have it available for such an emergency, but the king of the time trusted the American consultants and enjoyed fluff pieces printed in American newspapers talking about how he's such a visionary (sound familiar?) for pursuing this.
When the oil money runs out, they'll be back to fighting over dunes of sand. It's a damn shame because that money could've done so much good, but instead it went into feeding the egos of a bunch of "princes".
Who could have seen this coming?